The Middle East

Libya's universities

Pulling them apart

THE concrete wall cutting across the small campus of Derna university separates male and female students. A stark warning is painted in red on a nearby building: “The mixing of genders is forbidden”. Photos of the wall flooded Libyan social media when it was erected in April, raising eyebrows in a country where men and women have long attended university together. But religious hardliners and their allied militias are increasingly pushing for more conservative social values.

The wall in Derna resulted from a deal between the university and the Abu Salim Martyrs, a powerful local Islamist militia named after those who died in a notorious prison massacre in 1996. Derna, an eastern city where the state is almost completely absent, is plagued by insecurity and flourishing extremist groups. Its university has shut several times over the past two years due to clashes. The militia, which was formed during the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, the former ruler, offered to provide security but on the condition that men and women would not mix in outdoor areas.

The push for gender segregation in educational institutions is not limited to Derna, one of Libya’s most conservative cities. In Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace, efforts to prevent male and female students from mixing at the university are also under way. A new dress code advocates modest clothing for women. Locals say it is no coincidence that Sirte is home to a branch of Ansar al-Sharia, the radical militia designated a terrorist organisation by America in January. Social media and leafleting campaigns, some led by students themselves, have urged similar measures at campuses in the eastern city of Benghazi and the capital, Tripoli, home to the country’s biggest universities.

Libya’s top religious authority, Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani, the grand mufti, often leads the call for keeping men and women apart, in the workplace as well as university. His rulings are not legally binding but are influential, particularly among Islamists who wield considerable clout within the country’s nascent political and security apparatus.

Last year Mr Ghariani said he had received complaints about “the deterioration of morals and the widespread phenomena of free mixing between sexes, with no restrictions or regulations, in all state institutions”. He declared such behavious “immoral” and called for it to be banned. The mufti also issued a fatwa telling a newly married man that it was not permissible for his wife to continue her studies at a mixed university.

Several ultra-conservatives in Libya’s national congress have echoed similar sentiments, upsetting many who fear the country’s campuses are becoming battlegrounds in a wider struggle for national identity. “This is a cultural war,” says a women’s activist in Tripoli. “Libya is conservative but it has never been like this. We will never give our country up to these people.”

Readers' comments

One glaring policy failure of the West has been our inability to grasp the simple fact that in most parts of the world Islam is consonant with a medieval outlook. Whenever we find ourselves dealing with Islamists, in any situation and in any country or region, we need to bear in mind that they live in an utterly different mental universe - one that is smaller, darker, and more afraid than anything we can readily imagine. We are not, primarily, talking about religious differences but rather about differences of world-view. For the Islamist, the universe is as simple as the pre-Copernican universe was to the likes of Bede. There is no possibility of dialog or of reasoning or of appealing to common values because such a bridge between the present and the past does not exist. Until the West wakes up to the challenge which is essentially how to deal with intellectually and emotionally stunted individuals who see everything in utterly simplistic terms, we will continue to see problems arising wherever Islam is present. The situation is compounded, of course, by the fact that these medieval warriors have access to modern weapons of terrible lethality.
We cannot wish away this problem, nor can we deal with it in modern terms. This is a far deeper and far graver problem than commentators and politicians have so far realized. Indeed, the very liberal and relativistic values that make the West so superior to the medieval mindset are the very values that preclude us understanding the minds of the Islamists and thus make us perpetually vulnerable to their actions. It is long past time for a change.

The problem in Libya is that every time a liberal voice emerges and gains support, the nutters kill him. Britain, France and the US have really failed to pursue a brilliant success, by not helping in the formation of armed forces capable of fully repressing the militarised beardies.

Mr Ghariani said he had received complaints about “the deterioration of morals and the widespread phenomena of free mixing between sexes, with no restrictions or regulations, in all state institutions”. He declared such behavious “immoral” and called for it to be banned.
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But clearly ther is no moral issue when groups of men are formed to start attacking and killing others, simply because they object to how they are dressed or who they study with. Good to know what the priorities are.

This isn't quite in reply to CA-Oxonian below... But it sort-of takes off from his line of thinking
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The leadership of the West is so desexed and anti-sexual... What is it with the western media and sex?
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The Economist regards *Sexism* as grounds for deleting a blog comment... Look it up!.. I have had hundreds of comments deleted because they offended some feminist stakeholder... Extreme feminists regard any male/female sex as rape... And the media, including The Economist, cater to that crowd
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Any favourable reference to gender roles is verboten... I try to advocate for breadwinner & homemaker marriages to ensure that women pull together with men and not against us... !BAD!
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If the West weren't so anti-sexual, perhaps the North, East and South would be more interested in following our lead
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I daren't say anything more